The Hindu

Mangalore, Nov 23: People living in a house or an apartment where the ground floor is being predominantly used for commercial purposes will have to pay penal fees meant for commercial buildings to get their house regularised. This is applicable to people in urban areas across the State.

This was made clear at an interaction between the officials and civil engineers here on Wednesday.

The officials said the Karnataka Town and Country Planning (Regularisation of Unauthorised Development or Construction) Rules, 2007, had made it clear that the use of ground floor is taken as criterion to judge overall use of the building. Commissioner of Mangalore City Corporation Krishnappa Poojary, commissioner of Mangalore Urban Development Authority M.K. Gadkar, and other officials participated in the interaction which was organised by the Mangalore Association of Consulting Civil Engineers.

An official said if more than half of the ground floor area was being used for commercial purposes, the whole building would be considered as commercial for the purpose of regularisation. When this logic was questioned, an official said the builder could have easily used the whole building for commercial purposes.

It was pointed out that many building owners had erected AC sheet covering at the top to protect them from hot sun. A corporation official said the AC sheet roofs provided for protection of buildings would not come under the purview of the Act, provided there was no wall. The corporation commissioner said the latest master plan (CDP) was yet to be approved by the Government. Hence the previous master plan would hold good for deciding various aspects of regularisation. The officials, who were unable to give conclusive answers to a couple of doubts during the interaction, sought to revert later.

One such doubt was on securing no objection certificate from fire force for buildings that have more than four floors. Civil engineers pointed out that they were not being allowed to construct additional floors on buildings that had deviations in measurements by as little as five per cent until the existing building was regularised. To this, the officials said a clarification would be sought from the Government.

If the Government permitted, they would be allowed to go ahead, subject to the condition that the building owner had applied for regularisation. Rajendra Kalbavi, chairman of the association and Mukund Kamath, its secretary, were present.